Horsepond near a Boundary Stone

c. 1651 - c. 1654

Object data

oil on panel

support: height 35.5 cm × width 41.2 cm
outer size: depth 5.5 cm

Inscriptions

signature, with monogram, bottom left (letters of first name ligated): PHiLs:W

Technical notes

Support The single, horizontally grained oak plank is approx. 0.6 cm thick. The top edge has been trimmed. Wooden strips on the left and right (0.9 cm) were added at a later date. The reverse is bevelled at the bottom and on the left and right.
Preparatory layers The single, thin, off-white ground extends over the bottom edge of the support, but not over the top, left and right edges. It consists of white pigment particles with a few earth pigments.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could be detected with the naked eye or infrared photography.
Paint layers The paint extends up to the edges of the support. The first lay-in appears to have been executed in subdued browns and is still visible in the man and horse on the left. The composition was built up in only one or two layers, leaving the two main figures, the three horses in the foreground, the building and one or two of the smaller figures on the left in reserve. Part of the white horse on the far right was added over the background. A cross-section shows that the blue sky was applied directly on top of the ground in two layers: the first being a thicker greyish blue containing white pigment particles and translucent glassy particles, followed by a thin blue layer composed of white and deep blue pigment particles. The brownish foreground consists of one translucent layer applied on top of the ground, containing brown and black pigment particles. The paint surface is thin and smooth, with some slight impasto applied with small brushstrokes in the highlights of the clothing and faces. There is some open brushwork in the sky.
Ige Verslype, 2022

Scientific examination and reports

paint samples: I. Verslype, RMA, nos. SK-A-485/1-2, 1 November 2007
technical report: I. Verslype, RMA, 1 November 2007
infrared photography: I. Verslype, RMA, 2 November 2007

Condition

Good. The blue hat of the horseman on the right has a whitish haze. There is an area of alligator cracks in the foreground to the right of the boy in red. The varnish is somewhat discoloured.

Conservation

conservator unknown, 1957: cleaned, retouched and revarnished

Provenance

...; from Roelof Meurs Pruyssenaar, Amsterdam, with Jacob van Ruisdael, Waterfall,¹ fl. 4,000, to the museum, 5 May 1802;² on loan to the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, since 2008³

Object number: SK-A-485

The artist

Philips Wouwerman (Haarlem 1619 - Haarlem 1668)

Philips Wouwerman was baptized in Haarlem on 24 May 1619 as a son of the history painter Pouwels Joostensz, who was probably his teacher. De Bie says that he was a pupil of Frans Hals, although their work has nothing in common. An apprenticeship with Pieter Cornelisz Verbeeck is suspected on stylistic grounds. Another important influence was Pieter van Laer, who was also Haarlem-born and bred. It is known from notes made by the artist Matthias Scheits that Wouwerman, who came from a Reformed family, fled to Hamburg in 1638 in order to marry the Catholic Anna Pietersdr van Broeckhoff. He stayed there for a while, working in the studio of the history painter Evert Decker, but two years later he is again documented in his native Haarlem, where he remained for the rest of his life.

Wouwerman’s earliest dated painting is Military Encampment with Soldiers Gambling of 1639.⁴ He joined the Haarlem Guild of St Luke in 1640, being elected to the office of warden in 1646, and from 1642 and 1651 he served in the St George Civic Guard. Wouwerman made several history pieces with religious subjects for Catholic patrons. It is clear from various sources that he was a prosperous man. Houbraken mentions that he had important patrons from the very beginning of his career, and was able to give his daughter a dowry of 20,000 guilders. He supplemented his income by speculating on the property market and dealing in art. However, there are also indications that he suffered periods of poverty. For example, he is said to have painted his Miracle of St Hubert in 1660 for the clandestine Sint-Bernarduskerk in Haarlem in thanks for the financial support he had received from the parish priest. He remained productive to the end of his life, with his last dated picture, Grey Standing in a Stable,⁵ being executed in the year of his death. He died on 19 May 1668 and was buried in the Nieuwe Kerk in Haarlem four days later. Paintings by or belonging to him were sold at auction on 7 May 1670, a few months after the decease of his wife.

Wouwerman gained fame as a painter of horses, and specialized in landscapes with riders, ranging from battle scenes and army camps to hunting parties, horse fairs and stables. He also supplied the figures in landscapes by other Haarlem artists like Jacob van Ruisdael, Jan Wijnants and Cornelis Decker. His many pupils included Nicolaes Ficke (c. 1620/23-before 1702), Emanuel Murant (1622-c. 1700), Simon Dubois (1632-1708) and Anthonie de Haen (1640/41-in or before 1675). He may also have taught his younger brothers Pieter (1623-1682) and Jan (1629-1666). Wouwerman’s work, which in the eighteenth century fetched some of the highest prices for paintings from the Dutch Golden Age, was imitated by countless others.

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022

References
T. Schrevelius, Harlemias, Haarlem 1648, p. 384; C. de Bie, Het gulden cabinet van de edel vrij schilder const, inhoudende den lof vande vermarste schilders, architecte, beldthowers ende plaetsnijders van deze eeuw, Antwerp 1662, pp. 281-82; A. Houbraken, De groote schouburgh der Nederlantsche konstschilders en schilderessen, II, Amsterdam 1719, pp. 70-75, 102; R. van Eynden and A. van der Willigen, Geschiedenis der vaderlandsche schilderkunst, sedert de helft der XVIII eeuw, I, Haarlem 1816, pp. 404-06; A. van der Willigen, Geschiedkundige aanteekeningen over Haarlemsche schilders en andere beoefenaren van de beeldende kunsten, voorafgegaan door eene korte geschiedenis van het schilders- of St. Lucas Gild aldaar, Haarlem 1866, pp. 241-44; C.J. Gonnet, ‘De schilders Pouwels, Pieter en Steven Wouwerman’, in F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], VII, Rotterdam 1888-90, pp. 118-26; C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Die Malerfamilie Wouwerman’, Kunstchronik, N.S. 2 (1890-91), cols. 1-5; A. Lichtwark, Matthias Scheits, als Schilderer des Hamburger Lebens, 1650-1700, Hamburg 1899, pp. 43-44; S. Kalff, ‘De gebroeders Wouwerman’, Elsevier’s Geïllustreerd Maandschrift 30 (1920), pp. 96-103; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, XXXVI, Leipzig 1947, pp. 265-68; H. Miedema, De archiefbescheiden van het St. Lucasgilde te Haarlem, 1497-1798, II, Alphen aan den Rijn 1980, p. 1211; F.J. Duparc, ‘Philips Wouwerman, 1619-1668’, Oud Holland 107 (1993), pp. 257-86; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, pp. 13-21, 25-38; I. van Thiel-Stroman, ‘Biographies 15th-17th Century’, in P. Biesboer et al., Painting in Haarlem 1500-1850: The Collection of the Frans Hals Museum, coll. cat. Haarlem 2006, pp. 99-363, esp. pp. 357-61

Entry

A horsepond with bathers was one of Philips Wouwerman’s favourite subjects, and it may have been inspired by the work of Pieter van Laer, as is often the case with his early paintings.⁶ In this scene one’s eye is immediately caught by the riderless animal in the centre, with the white part of its coat standing out against the dark background. It is not a palfrey, like in The Grey,⁷ but a jennet, a fiery Spanish/Berber breed.⁸ It is being led on a bridle, but it cannot be reined in entirely, for it is standing on its forelegs and is lashing out with its hind legs, turning its head as it does so and showing the white of its eye. It may be reacting to the boy with the whip behind it. Its bucking action is accentuated with a strategically placed highlight on its rear left hoof.⁹ Wouwerman was a painter of horses with few equals, but this picture shows that he was no less a master of cloudscapes. The sky takes up roughly two-thirds of the composition, with dark grey clouds massing together against the bright blue beyond.

The painting should be dated to the first half of the 1650s.¹⁰ It seems that Wouwerman had now shaken off the influence of Pieter Cornelisz Verbeeck, Pieter van Laer and Isack van Ostade that had informed his early work. One characteristic of the style that he was gradually developing is the way in which he places figures against a contrasting background. Houbraken had already mentioned this ‘artful distribution of light objects against dark, and then dark against light’ as one of the distinctive aspects of Wouwerman’s oeuvre.¹¹

Little is known about the way in which Wouwerman put his compositions together. Several early works like the Battle Scene dated 1647 in Karlsruhe have visible underdrawings,¹² but this does not appear to have been his standard method, for none were revealed with infrared photography in any of his pictures in the Rijksmuseum. Both the paucity of preliminary drawings and the structure of his paintings, in which some of the figures were reserved and some were added over the background, certainly suggest that he conceived at least part of his compositions while he was actually working on them. Here, too, only a few figures were completely reserved.

This is the first painting by Wouwerman that the Rijksmuseum bought. The reputation that he enjoyed in the early nineteenth century is illustrated by the fact that it was also one of the first works to be chosen for inclusion in the album of reproductive engravings titled De Bataafsche Kunstgallerij (The Batavian Art Gallery). Reinier Vinkeles made a print after it for that purpose in 1805.¹³

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022

See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements

Literature

J. Smith, A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works of the Most Eminent Dutch, Flemish and French Painters, I, London 1829, p. 333, no. 45; ibid., IX, 1842, p. 228, no. 261; C. Hofstede de Groot, Beschreibendes und kritisches Verzeichnis der Werke der hervorragendsten holländischen Maler des XVII. Jahrhunderts, II, Esslingen/Paris 1908, p. 272, no. 69; B. Schumacher, Philips Wouwerman (1619-1668): The Horse Painter of the Golden Age, I, Doornspijk 2006, p. 187, no. A43

Collection catalogues

1809, pp. 84-85, no. 359; 1843, pp. 69-70, no. 357 (‘the sky and the vista have been damaged, is overpainted at the bottom of the sky’); 1853, p. 31, no. 329 (fl. 4,000); 1858, pp. 167-68, no. 371; 1880, p. 353, no. 415; 1887, p. 194, no. 1654; 1903, p. 304, no. 2716; 1934, p. 324, no. 2716 (with incorrect provenance); 1976, p. 614, no. A 485

Citation

Gerdien Wuestman, 2022, 'Philips Wouwerman, Horsepond near a Boundary Stone, c. 1651 - c. 1654', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6597

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